Fried Fish?

[ricardienne]

I can't decide whether this is an interesting point of view, or whether Stanley Fish is just playing troll. Based on where he ends up (and who he is), I think the latter, though it's also quite possible that he really thinks he is bringing obvious and learned enlightenment to us all (with Milton! Always with Milton.)

(Thought Experiment: Are there situations where a person could be trolling without the intention of doing so?)

Comments

[thnidu.livejournal.com]

"(Thought Experiment: Are there situations where a person could be trolling without the intention of doing so?)"

I think so. The listserver of the American Dialect Society is regularly polluted by an ignoramus named Tom Zurinskas, who fervently believes that since he is a native speaker of a natural language, he knows everything that needs to be known about languages (any language), and who explicitly disdains study of linguistics. He is the inventor of Truespel (http://truespel.com/):

Truespel is the World’s first “pronunciation guide spelling system” based American English, the world’s most important language. It’s designed for the first time to integrate literacy tools, such dictionary pronunciation guides, translation guides, initial reading guides, and phonetic analysis tools by using one simple easy-to-use phonetic spelling... It is truly the simplest and only such phonetic spelling system there is today that is pronunciation guide quality.

Right. It also works, he insists, for other languages. Oh, and if you pronounce a word differently from him -- say, your dialect has low-back vowel merger, so "Don" and "dawn" sound the same -- you're wrong.

When he first started posting to ADS-L years ago, I answered his posts seriously, trying to educate him and show him his errors. No dice. His is a case of invincible ignorance: He can't be educated because he refuses to be.

So, to bring it around at last to your thought experiment: Some, including me, called for banning him from the list, but the listmaster refused on the grounds of academic freedom, and I had to agree. There was some discussion of "Is TZ a troll?" I said "No, he isn't a troll, because a troll posts with the aim of deliberately upsetting and offending people regardless of his actual beliefs, whereas this flat-earth bozo actually (IMHO) honestly believes what he's saying."

BUT! the effect is the same. He is in effect a troll without being one stricto sensu: an unintentional troll.

[achyvi.livejournal.com]

I would think that concern trolls, despite having "troll" in their name, could be considered unintentional trolls. They're often seem quite sincere in their meddlesome desires, but it sure as hell seems like they just do it for the lulz sometimes. If one were to suggest that to them, they would be horrified, but since they're usually just doing it to feel better about themselves, that seems to put them pretty squarely into the troll camp.